Archive - November 6, 2023

    BRATTLEBORO — For more than 90 years, people from all over the world have come to Southern Vermont to live and learn, starting with the Experiment for International Living in 1932 and later known as the School for International Training. In the early 1960s, alumnus Sargent Shriver asked the Experiment, then located on Black Mountain in Brattleboro, to train the first wave of volunteers for the nascent Peace Corps, a training program that evolved into the School for International Training and the SIT Study Abroad program, which enrolled at its height more than 2,000 people every year. In 2008, World Learning, SIT’s parent organization, renamed the program in Brattleboro the SIT Graduate Institute, offering master’s degrees in eight areas of study, as well as certificate and professional development programs. In 2018, World Learning announced it was scaling back its programs in Brattleboro, while offering the same courses at locations around the . . .

Countryside: Kitchen Medicine: Herbalist Chooses the Plants at Our Doorstep By Theresa Curry November 3, 2023 Kat Maier (Chile 1978-79) loves the types described in Ayurvedic medicine and has studied plant traditions in Chile as a Peace Corps volunteer, went to an internationally known herb school in England, spent time in the lush hedgerows of Ireland and learned from herbalists all over the world. But, “Don’t go online and order exotic powders and tinctures from afar,” she said. “Let’s start with the local plants that are appropriate for us.” Maier, owner of Sacred Plant Traditions in Charlottesville, and the author of the best-selling book Energetic Herbalism, spoke to an enthusiastic crowd at the Rockfish Valley Community Center late last month as part of  public radio WMRA’s Books and Brews series. She said our fertile mountains are known for high-quality, potent plants that grow wild and thrive. “People all over the world . . .